Brownback agrees: No to a Palestinian state

Thursday, October 11, 2007 |
by Staff Writer

US Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback on Wednesday lent his support to an alternative Israeli peace plan that rejects the idea of solving the Israeli-Arab conflict through the creation of a Palestinian Arab state on ancient Israeli lands.

The peace plan was officially introduced by its author, nationalist Knesset Member Benny Elon at a Jerusalem peace conference, during which Brownback's videotaped endorsement was played.

The Kansas senator called Elon's plan a "realistic proposal and different way forward...which needs to be looked at broadly in the international community."

Brownback insisted that the decade-old land-for-peace formula had proved a dismal failure, and agreed with Elon that Jordan should again be recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinian Arabs.

More than half of Jordan's population is made up of Palestinian Arabs, who are ruled by a Bedouin minority that originally came from Mecca.

Elon's plan argues that since what are today Jordan and Israel were at the beginning of the British Mandate the same piece of land, then the Arabs living on the east and west banks of the Jordan River are the same nationality and need only one sovereign country through which to exercise their rights.

The plan, which Elon will present to Israel's leadership in the coming weeks, calls for Israel to annex Judea and Samaria, for Jordan to grant citizenship to all Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria, and for the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled.

Elon is pursuing a $1 million marketing campaign, though his plan is not expected to find any support in the current Israeli and American administrations.

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